


Fang, Fur, Sword and Bone

by CaketinTheHobo



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Free-Verse Poetry, Gen, Poetry, Werewolves, basically those marked are also werewolves, mostly stays canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 10:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8158525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaketinTheHobo/pseuds/CaketinTheHobo
Summary: Time was,Sailors used to listen for the whalesong and fear those from the deep.Now riverhands of Dunwall fearthe songs of the wolves.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allcometoruin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allcometoruin/gifts).



> So I mostly wrote this while I was away on holiday? It's my first time writing in this style so please be kind!  
> It was in a very large part inspired by Toby Barlow's "Sharp Teeth", which I highly recommend.

 

" _Fear and flee the wolf, for, worst of all, the wolf may be more than he seems."_

_Angela Carter; **The Company of Wolves**_

* * *

 

He never believed

In the tales of the wolves.

 

Here's the thing:

Corvo’s from Serkonos.

Serkonos has it's gangs, the lawbreakers, the dance between good and evil.

Dunwall has all that,

and more.

He was taught to watch for three things when he got here.

The thieves looking fund their next meal.

The gangs that were constantly at war,

and

the wolves.

 

Some say

They came from Pandyssia,

like the rats.

Or they came from the Outsider’s world,

the Void, to punish

those who renounce the Abbey of the Everyman.

Or, perhaps,

They were always here.

 

He never believed. Not until

a pack descended on an empress. His charge

\- his love -

And tore her from the world.

 

* * *

 

 

Everyone whispers about the Outsider. The boy

who stands in the void between worlds.

It is not a boy Corvo meets,

but a wolf.

 

Shining grey fur, mottled with a pattern like sealskin

(Or starlight)

Eyes as black as coal and deeper than an ocean,

Shards of bone where teeth and claws

should be.

Corroded, fresh.

Old, young.

 

He does not ask permission.

To receive his mark is an honour.

To receive his bite,

sacrament.

 

Bone-breaking, empty cold passes through

His body. His blood,

like the tide.

To lose oneself in the void

is no easy thing.

But Corvo falls

every single time.

 

Wolves travel in packs.

Hunt in packs,

Sleep, eat,

Commune.

He is alone. A wolf,

who barely knows he is one.

Snapping at rats and hiding from guards,

as if he still has reason

to fear.

 

His claws are untested, razor sharp

and glimmering gold in the streetlights.

If he cared to look,

at his reflection,

He would see his eyes are golden too.

 

He first tastes blood on a rainsoaked night in Holger Square.

Sees the red of Campbell's coat,

hears the voice of Jessamine, and feels

the vast emptiness of the void,

pulling.

It's easy to fall.

 

Comes back in a pile of bones licked clean.

A shredded red coat.

A man, cowering in the corner,

dead.

Callista had asked him to save her uncle,

But there would have been no saving Geoff Curnow

from the wolf.

He leaves the body, ignores

the way his stomach feels full of something other

than rat.

 

* * *

 

Time was,

Sailors used to listen for the whalesong and fear those from the deep.

Now riverhands of Dunwall fear

the songs of the wolves.

 

* * *

 

There's a new wolf in Dunwall.

She knows it the moment he's made.

The change, the snap,

the rending of the void.

She's been around so long,

_Granny,_ they call her. Her fur

hangs around in tatters.

Like rags.

 

She knows every time the boy-god chooses another.

He doesn't visit her any more.

She sees the new one the next night. He's wild, fresh, alone.

She considers ending his life;

her birds - her pack - needs to eat after all, but,

He's new,

fresh,

barely knows what he is.

It seems a shame to waste that.

 

Her birds can eat later.

There's fresher meat to be found.

 

* * *

 

The Mark gives him power.

The bite removes his fear.

He's fast, strong,

golden eyes can peer through firmament and flesh and steel.

He finds Emily in a brothel.

They never find the Pendleton twins.

 

(In a distillery, a man named Slackjaw will sigh,

and wonder,

what became of the deal he made

With a steel-and-gold masked stranger.)

 

He's better, now,

Faster to change, slower

To succumb to the cold, aching expanse of void.

 

He is nothing but wolf.

Has nothing,

but wolf.

 

* * *

 

Wolves are not meant for cities.

For cobbled streets,

For crumbling buildings.

They long for trees,

Forests,

To howl at a moon circumscribed by stars,

and not smog.

 

But this is Dunwall.

Home was never here,

and the forest is a myth the sailors speak of.

 

* * *

 

“You make

funny faces

in your sleep,” she tells him.

He smiles, nods,

doesn't tell her of dreams filled with the endless hunt,

Of the wolves running through the void,

Of her mother,

running,

too.

 

The Overseer knows.

Probably suspected it the moment he met him.

Corvo can tell.

Can hear it, in his words,

Smell it,

The fear, the curiosity, the same

things that Corvo has felt

ever since he was made anew.

The Physician knows, too,

for different reasons.

Saw the wolf that stepped into the greenhouse,

Saw the man that approached his cage.

 

An irony,

if you think about it.

 

* * *

 

There's a new wolf in Dunwall.

Daud’s not so old that

he can recognise the shift.

It's more,

The men, reporting of new scents,

New tales, of a black-and-brown, golden-eyed wolf.

That haunts the city,

like a ghost they have wronged somehow.

 

No pack, no partner,

no-one

to tell them how

Daud's pack rules all.

 

_But do they?_ is the question

that the pack asks now, and

Daud,

Daud cannot find

an answer

that's a whole, truthful,

yes.

 

Times have changed.

The wolves of Brigmore,

with their skulls of bone,

and rotting,

mottled coats that are more vine than fur,

need to be dealt with

before this single interloper.

 

Could be Granny Rags has taken a new apprentice,

or found a new meal.

Could be a problem,

but Daud cannot spare the men.

 

He has a date with an Eel.

A boat to catch,

and a witch to kill.

 

* * *

 

He’d forgotten what opulence had felt like.

It seems so long ago,

parties, court, gossip,

underhand dealings.

Wine the colour of blood, and food

tasting of ashes.

 

The Ladies Boyle are not

so unique,

he learns. New senses immediately find

which one

he is to kill.

She smells of death

She smells

like the Lord Regent.

 

A wolf slips out of the cellar,

the man inside

wonders

if he could have found another way.

No matter.

He learned long ago,

you cannot change the past.

 

_You cannot save her._

 

Too late for her, but not

he hopes

too late for her daughter.

For Emily, he tells himself,

as he slips between forms

as he slips

between worlds.

 

Maybe,

his mind says,

_It’s too late for you,_

_too._

 

* * *

 

There’s a word for what he is.

Lycanthrope. _Lobisomen,_ in

Serkonan.

The stories about the _lobisomen_

all stemmed

from one.

 

A king once tried

to murder

a god.

But not satisfied

with mere deicide, the king

served the god

the part-cooked flesh

of his own son.

And so, he was cursed to live

in the body of a wolf.

 

_Lobisomen._

Werewolf.

Cursed.

 

Corvo’s cynical enough

that he doesn’t believe in curses. But,

he never used to believe in _lobisomen_

either.

 

Perhaps the curse

Is that he can’t tell the difference

anymore.

 

* * *

 

There’s a new wolf in Dunwall.

But she has no time for it.

The Whalers are coming

and Delilah

is not yet done.

 

Her pack is strong,

loyal,

and will fight the wolves of Daud

until there is nothing

but bones and ash.

 

The Outsider does not visit,

does not comment,

or condone,

on her plan. But Delilah

no longer wonders whether the boy-god cares for her,

whether he still watches.

She is long past any sort of desire

for forgiveness

or recompense.

She has what she needs;

and the Outsider no longer belongs

in her plans.

 

The Whalers;

undefeatable in a pack. Like smoke,

incandescent and unable to be caught.

Feral, foul, tainted by city life.

Not like hers, who use

venom, and guile, and every

means

at their disposal.

Isolation is their strength,

and nowhere is more isolated

than Brigmore Manor.

 

Daud is coming,

and Delilah is waiting.

 

* * *

 

The Lord Regent will die

tonight.

Corvo knows the tower,

can tread it as easily as a man

as he can a wolf.

Skirts the outer patrols

like the mist that sculls the Wrenhaven.

 

Inside, he lets childish human thought take over.

Hiram Burrows watches,

as a wolf

with eyes as gold as the sun

steps up to his video screen.

Muzzle drenched in the blood

of the last guards

sworn to protect him.

 

(Corvo has no mercy for anyone here.)

 

Watches, as the wolf

changes

into a man,

naked save for a gleaming red grin.

“Remember me,

Hiram?”

 

He remembers.

Remembers the man he

consigned to death

now come

to seek his revenge.

The ghosts of our past never leave us

but he never expected

the ghost

to have quite so sharp a smile.

 

The Lord Regent’s reign ends

as it begins.

With blood, fear,

and the rending of flesh under teeth.

 

* * *

 

There’s a wolf

in their conspiracy.

Havelock knew

that breaking out Corvo would come with risks

but _this?_ This

was not the risk he imagined.

 

People on the land tell stories

of creatures in the deepest oceans.

The whales, the sharks,

the things too terrifying to name.

But sailors like him,

they have stories too,

about the creatures that dwell on the land.

And the wolves

that can pass as men

are among them.

 

* * *

 

“Samuel,

you move

as if you’ve been drinking.”

He has.

Corvo can smell it,

even as the poison corrodes

and exterminates

his senses.

 

“They watched me do it,”

the boatman says. Tells him

that he knew he’d survive.

Because the wolf inside him

is too strong

and not yet done in his revenge.

 

The waters of the Flooded District

are cold, but

not as cold

as the void Corvo embraces

night after night

after night.

 

* * *

 

The new wolf of Dunwall

is coming.

Daud should have guessed

that it would be Corvo.

They found him

poisoned.

Sent down the river by those who called him

ally. To Daud.

 

Daud, whose hands

shake

every time he picks up his sword.

Whose wolf longs for something other

than to feel human flesh break,

than to tread the cobbled stones

of a city he was not born in.

 

Daud knows that whatever the outcome

today will be his last day

in Dunwall.

 

* * *

 

There’s a pack in the district.

Corvo knew there were others.

But this many

is something unexpected.

He finds

the bodies

of the Overseers. Doesn’t find

it in him to feel sympathy.

 

Daud is Marked.

Bitten.

That much Corvo knows.

But these others seem

lesser,

not quite as whole as he.

A shared bond. A shared bite.

But all are willing to defend their master

to the death.

 

He and Daud meet

in a clash of fangs and claws

and fur.

Russet red meeting jet black,

golden and grey

and carnal

savage

fury.

 

“I have,

one more surprise for you,”

Daud says.

“I ask for my life.”

 

Daud’s from Serkonos,

like him.

Marked, like him.

Chosen

like him.

Corvo wonders if one day

the similarities between them

will be too numerous to tell.

 

Daud asks for his life. He does not

ask

for forgiveness.

He also does not specify

what condition Corvo is supposed to leave him in.

In the end

he should be happy with the fact

that Corvo left him alive at all.

 

* * *

 

She should have killed

the new wolf

the moment she saw him.

Granny does not have a pack.

Not like Daud, or Delilah.

She has her birds, and her will

to dominate;

to eat

every wolf that crosses

her path.

 

Her war had turned

to more human prey.

The Bottle Street gang had been allowed to live

for far too long

in her opinion.

And now she has

Slackjaw, the king of the cleaver,

in her grasp.

 

It’s time for the new blood

to learn his place.

Granny is older then all of them

put together. She has her birds

her magic

and her thirst for wolven blood.

 

(Shackled to the floor of a sewer,

a man named Slackjaw sits

and wonders,

what will become of the mange-bitten wolf

who fights with the gold and black stranger.)

 

Granny fights

with tooth and nail,

the desire to prevail over all

who choose to defy her.

She and her rats have won

every single time.

 

But Corvo knows

how to make a feast of rat,

and Granny’s drive

is nothing compared

to his own.

 

He leaves Slackjaw

with the bones of a wolf,

and a bloody key gently placed before him.

 

* * *

 

The conspiracy has fled

by the time he returns. Like rats,

scattering in the wake of a sinking ship.

But a sinking ship doesn’t seek retribution.

Corvo’s barely a week old in his new state

but he knows how to hunt,

and how to find

his prey.

 

He finds three corpses not of his making.

Callista, Wallace, and Lydia.

Cecelia, he leaves. She was kind,

and never asked

for any of this.

 

Neither did he, he supposes,

but he was never given the chance to wonder.

Never given a choice or a moment to question.

He still isn’t. Still has to fight

with every last breath.

 

Piero and Sokolov are alive,

caged,

and discussing means of escape.

Corvo doesn’t bother with their convoluted plan.

Decimation and fear have worked this past week,

and do so

once more.

 

The philosophers learned

to look above.

To the heavens and stars

and the void beyond.

But when they see the wolf that treads the stairs,

bloodied and battle-worn

they wonder

if the heavens are worth aspiring to.

To touch divinity is not a blessing.

 

The man before them

once named as Corvo

is but a trace of the man they knew.

Betrayed one too many times,

and maybe

stripped of his last vestige of humanity

by this final

terrible woe.

 

* * *

 

The boat leaves him at the peak of a thunderstorm.

Pelt soaked by rain,

he moves like a shadow.

Finds an Overseer in the gatehouse,

hurling insults at the storm.

He dies by his own gun,

rather than let the wolf

tear him down.

 

He finds a nobleman

atop a set of stairs,

bleeding from a wound inflicted by another man.

He spouts profanity and blasphemy

but dies just the same,

without ever feeling the jaws of a wolf.

 

They had the audacity to call him the monster,

but he’s learned the humans are the worst

of them all.

 

A wolf is supposed

to have a pack. A family, a bond.

Even the crows, the _corvidae_ he was named for

travel in flocks.

Corvo has nothing

but her.

 

A child - _his child -_

that he swore to defend

and care for

until he too is torn from the world.

 

The Admiral knows

that he is coming.

The tower reeks of hate,

of desperation,

of fear.

Corvo does not give him the opportunity to explain himself

and wallow in his belief of righteousness.

 

He catches a bullet as he tears across the catwalk,

but it is nothing compared to the ache of the void

nothing

compared to the rending of his soul

when Jessamine was lost.

 

If Admiral Havelock feels

just an ounce of that pain,

then Corvo is satisfied.

 

The body falls to the rocks below

and the wolf stands

golden-eyed, black-furred, red-muzzled,

and duty-bound to the little girl before him.

She reaches out

and for the first time

the wolf feels the gentle touch of another.

And the howls

that ring out around the lighthouse peak

fade with the storm

to the broken sobs

of a man.

 

(She never believed

in the tales of the wolves.

Not until

her father

became one.)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at wardens-oath.tumblr.com


End file.
